Michelle Rodriguez: ‘Sorry About That’

An actress best-known for her roles in Avatar and the Fast and the Furious franchise apologized Saturday for speaking out against casting nonwhite performers as superheroes traditionally perceived as white.

“I stuck my foot in my mouth once again,” Michelle Rodriguez said in a video posted to Facebook. “I have a tendency to speak without a filter, sorry about that.”

She went on to essentially repeat and also expand upon her original point.

“I’m just saying that instead of trying to turn a girl character into a guy, or instead of trying to turn a white character into a black charter or latin character, I think that people should stop being lazy and that people should actually make an effort in hollywood to develop their own mythology,” she said.

Rodriguez had earlier told a reporter from the gossip and celebrity news site TMZ—who jokingly asked if she’d be starring as The Green Lantern—that she’s opposed to the recent vogue of proposing (and sometimes casting) nonwhite stars in franchise fare. “It’s so stupid,” she said. “Stop stealing all the white people’s superheroes. Make up your own. What’s up with that?”

The African-American actor Michael B. Jordan will star in Fantastic Four as the Human Torch this summer, and comedian Donald Glover has long been touted as a contender for a black Spider-Man.

In fairness, the Hispanic actress’s own movie work has tended towards films based on original material. But her critique elides the fact that it’s much more difficult to get a movie made when it’s not based on an existing property, and those existing properties–be they comic books or otherwise—more often than not feature a cast of white characters. That makes for limited casting options for nonwhite actors less fortunate than Rodriguez.

[TMZ]